The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Kaurie]

The Relic line could do something similar to how Blade and Soul works. In blade and soul your weapon progresses with you by 'offering' other weapons. So you can go from regular stage 1-5 by offering random weapon drops, but at stage 5 through 6 you need to use a special weapon obtained via a trial or open world boss. Then stage 6-10 same as 1-5, and at stage 10 you need another special weapon + crafting item (also sometimes obtainable as a drop) to progress.

In this sense we could have the next stage work like this. From ilvl 210-215 is done via offering weapon drops found via dungeons etc. The higher the ilvl offering, the better progress made. This would also create some desire for crafted weapons. Then at 215, you need to get the next Trial EX weapon drop + some crafting item to surpass to move it to 216, and move on to 220. This would let the more casual players achieve at least a 215 weapon. It would also make the process less grindy and more natural, as you can obtain weapon drops in most content (use tomestones to purchase weapon offerings, craft weapons, weapon drops, ex trials etc)

[Alahra]

-snip-

Some elements of that (like being able to progress through most content) are why we so often see Tomestone costs, I think, and Nexus/Zeta "light" stages.

It would be a novel way to use old item drops, and I suppose it's something they might do someday in the future. Relying on the item level of the "offered" weapon would provide an interesting way for them to incorporate more "midcore" content, since things like weapons from EX Primals would grant more progress than something from a Roulette dungeon (though that lever also existed for Nexus/Zeta since EX primals gave higher light values—though you could reasonably argue their values weren't high enough for the effort).